The “QFPC™”, short for „Quality Family Planning Credit™ is a new „Voluntary Carbon Unit (VCU)”. It shows how much CO2e emission the work of the BOCS Foundation has prevented, which is fundamentally oriented towards providing family planning (i.e. contraception) opportunities. This is the most cost effective climate protection strategy,[1] and sorely needed, as stopping population growth is necessary to curb climate change and to reach sustainability.

Pleasure planning (i.e. contraception) is a basic human right (UN, 1968) and providing it is a fundamental humanitarian obligation. Half of the conceptions occurs against the will of the couples. Hundred million of tragic child fates start as accidental pregnancies. Every year, ten million of teenage girls give birth. Every year, a million infants die just because he/she was born less than one and a half years after the previous birth, from which the mother’s body couldn’t even regenerate from.

The lack of family planning opportunities is not only about the lack of means, but also, women might not have the right or the knowledge to use them, or the socioeconomic structure they live in might not make them accessible or affordable. Persuasion of policy makers and media personnel, making budget spending more efficient, technical development, liberation of women, starting movements, changing the mentality of education and healthcare, etc. all promote that only prepared couples conceive children, as a responsible decision.

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Based on the calculations of big organizations like the UNFPA and the IPPF, and taking all these factors into consideration, an accidental pregnancy in a poor country may be continually prevented for €10 per month on average.

That monthly 10 € spent on contraception in poor countries is worth more than 14.000 € of ordinary aid in a year. But this exceptional possibility to help this way is only available for a few years, and for a select few. Now you can still enter that elite club of humanity who are turning the course of history in the right direction.[2]

In the last decade, we worked in several African countries as the Hungarian partners of big Western organizations. Besides that, we conducted communication in both Western Europe and Hungary towards the public, environmentalists, and multiplicators (e.g. teachers, media personnel, etc.), and lobbied at policy makers in realizing that the providing the right, competence, and means of contraception is the most efficient climate strategy[3].

The Hungarian international development (ODA, Official Development Assistance) means that according to the expectations of the UN, Hungary has to help the poor countries by 0,7% of its GNI every year. The BOCS Foundation has been the member of the advisory board of the Foreign Affairs, as long as it was standing. In 2015, about 50 million forints went for contraception aid, but this is still only 0,12% of the ODA. This means that there is still a lot to do when it comes to helping people realize that contraception aid in the poor world is not only philantrophy, but also a fundamental Hungarian interest.

Sources:[1]Hawken, P. (2017). “Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.” New York, New York: Penguin Books.[2]Ten per cent of international aid for family planning[3]Seth Wynes and Kimberly A Nicholas. (2017) „The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions” Environmental Research Letters 12 074024